Most People Insist That Two Separate Being Can Never Be One

[Anomalocaris]

That the disciples as a group signed up for a sharply reduced lifetime of pain isn't explainable by politics or economics.

There is little evidence they died for here belief in Christianity and your second statement is simply an assertion plenty of people have been willing to endure truly horrific treatment for both.

all sorts of things that seemingly can’t be explained by immediate political or economic consideration apparent to a superficial observer can be explained by gullibility, suggestability, ignorance, dimwittedness, insanity,  psychosis, duplicity, amongst other things.

each one of these are quite probable, and infinitely more probably than “god”, much less these halfwits somehow being inspired by any “god”.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

There is little evidence they died for here belief in Christianity and your second statement is simply an assertion plenty of people have been willing to endure truly horrific treatment for both.

all sorts of things that can’t be explained by politics or economy can be explained by gullibility born of ignorance, suggest ability, stupidity, insanity,  psychosis, amongst other things.

And, of course, there's no way to know what they were promised for being disciples. "The Romans won't touch you if you give your life to this god!"

[Anomalocaris]

or, as always,  “this deeply iniquitous living you are eking out is but a trial opportunity to get you into ever last reward in the afterlife, you but have to have faith  in this or that to seal this deal that seems better than any other you can get in this iniquitous life…..”


so there are most certainly political and economic factors.  politics because this life ir iniquitous, economic because this life is hard.   Completely delusional economic factors of real cost vs made up fantasy supernatural reward pushed by hucksters and swallowed hook line and sinker by the dimwits to be sure, but most certainly still economy factors, exactly as the seemingly incomprehensible considerations of the victims of the African pronce scan are still perfectly comprehensible economic considerations once you factor in the unscrupulousness of the hucksters and the gullibility of the victims.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

^‘I know your life as a [fisherman/stonecutter/dung harvester] is horrible, hard, and nasty, but if you’ll just follow me and do as your told, you’ll get a sweet deal when you die.’ - Religious hucksters, dawn of civilization-present day.

Boru

[Vicki Q]

^‘I know your life as a [fisherman/stonecutter/dung harvester] is horrible, hard, and nasty, but if you’ll just follow me and do as your told, you’ll get a sweet deal when you die.’ - Religious hucksters, dawn of civilization-present day.

Boru

Very true, including many nominally Xian ones. I remember watching a Prosperity Gospel money appeal to find out what their approach was, and it was much, much worse than I imagined.

However Paul's 'return' was the exact opposite of that.

In 2 Corinthians, he is responding to a request for an updated CV listing his achievements, because his authority had been challenged. This was standard in C1 Greek society- the idea being to portray him as a hero.

In one of the darkest examples of humour I can think of, he lists (2 Cor 11) the beatings and sufferings he's had to endure, the very inverse of heroic achievements. If Jesus suffered, the ultimate role model, Christians must expect to suffer as well, goes his argument. “I bear on my body the marks of the Lord Jesus”. You want a CV? It's written in the scars on my backside.

And you can expect the same, he says to the Corinthians. Who know that already (2 Cor 4).

And he said the same thing to the Philippians (ch1) and to the Thessalonians (1Th 2,3).

I mean I might have got the rhyming scheme wrong on We Didn't Start The Fire, but I filled one verse off the top of my head easily, with plenty of material left for at least another couple of verses e.g. above. Everyone in C1 Mediterranean knew becoming a Xian was going to be very, very painful.

Rather than getting rich, as the leaders of this persecuted organisation, the earliest disciples got badly hurt for their troubles.

[Fake Messiah]

All these verses show that Paul felt persecuted, but that doesn't mean he was. After all, Paul was a nutty guy who claimed to have walked on 3rd heaven, so it's like with people who believe that they were abducted by aliens and then they feel persecuted.


When it comes to the prosperity gospel, Jesus is described as its proponent. Like when he praises the widow for giving her last money to the temple - it is very much “giving until it hurts.”
Under any normal, rational idea of what makes sense, it was not smart that the widow “put in all she had to live on.” It’s more logical to wonder why Jesus didn’t help her get the money back. Jesus commend a mindset that prompts a widow to give away—to a mammoth religious bureaucracy—all the money she has to live on.

[Silver]

Scripture isn't validation for historical reality.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Scripture isn't validation for historical reality.

Or anything else for that matter.

[no one]

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Some ignorant, deluded, erroneous babble passage.

Therefore magic, and wish granting sky pixies exist. 

Also, I AM SO SUPER SPECIAL!!! I inhabit a miniscule fragment of the universe, but I AM OBVIOUSLY ITS CENTER!!!! 


Carry on, heathens. 

[The Grand Nudger]

Paul conflated himself with christ? Geee....you don't say.....

At any rate, I think there might be a tiny probblem with a faith that relies on an ahistorical understanding of itself in order to perpetuate itself. What are we telegraphing when we do this? That what we believe is only as valid as the lies we tell ourselves about it. Christians need to figure out a way to come to terms with the actual history of their religion and still maintain it, or it's going to end up in the dustbin of religious history like all the rest. The future of christianity cannot depend on people who take ad hoc folk tales for gospel. That's the primary vector of erosion for all of christian history.

Or, if we prefer, it can depend on that and often has, but if it continues, it has no future. It's already being subverted from within en masse by new age beliefs which may be no more factual or historic, but have the benefit of being less shitty and more comfortable to contemporary believers. If they want to be in the Truth™ business...and by god christians do want that..then just fucking tell it. Don't pepper important truths with unimportant lies. That's idiotic. It ensures that some number of people will absolutely reject that important truth when they discover they've been told an unimportant lie.